Roger Lueder - Developing MyLifeBits

Bah, that was so uninformative I stopped halfway through part 2. And I was looking forward to this, him being a VC++ PM and all.
The questions were bad. And some of the comments ... vapid.
1. He mentions that CLR code will run fine, and this surprises who? It's the whole point of the VM, as the x64/Itanium isn't the platform, but .NET is. Big whoop.
2. He mentiones that some developers think (I want to see a show of hands here) that going 64 will give twice the speed.
3. And this comment "If you can read 32 bit code, you can read 64 bit code", WOW! Considering that even C abstracts the bitsize of the architecture away, this will surprise who?
And then he seems WAAY overenthusiastic about going 64 bit. How on earth does 32 -> 64 compare to the invention of the web? Few apps need an address space larger then 4 gig. Sure, 16 bit was not alot, but really, what has changed things is not the larger address
space, but the architecture of chips, and operating systems. That you got more memory is really not where it's at.
I'm a little surprised. The interview (or first half at least) gave no real reasons why 64 bit code will rock my world, so it all feels a bit hyped, which is a shame. What desktop machine does data mining (which cannot be accomplished in four gigs?), and how
does media processing/files benefit from 64 bit?
Let me ask people in another way:
What would be seriously hampered, by the desktop market staying on 32 bit for another ... five years (let's ignore installed base, etc). If Intel and AMD kept making 32 bit chips, and nothing else for five more years, what would be the consequenses?
Edit: Well, not to sound too sour
What I want to know, is WHY does he sound so hyped, about 64 bit? Data mining is nice, but really, who does that on a desktop (in a scale which cannot be accomplished today)? And media files? How do they benefit? Tell us what's exciting about it! We know that
it wont affect actual developing, the architecture, languages and tools were made that way, to make the impact as small as possible.
SvendTofte wrote:The questions were bad.
derekvs wrote:so it's my bet that the majority of first owners of x64 PCs will be game junkies like me
PuckPuck wrote:Didn't Bill Gates himself once say no one will ever need more than 640KB of RAM?
Is ASP.NET 1.1 available on the 64 bit extended version of Windows 2003 Server? When I install VS.NET 2003 I then get Service Unavailable from IIS when navigating to the main under construction site (http://localhost) and I get error 'HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable' when trying to start a new ASP.NET project. I uninstalled IIS and reinstalled IIS, and the under construction default page comes up normally, I ran aspnet_regiis -i and then get the same service unavailable error. I get the following errors in the event log. A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' reported a failure. The process id was '1876'. The data field contains the error number. A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' reported a failure. The process id was '2904'. The data field contains the error number. A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' reported a failure. The process id was '820'. The data field contains the error number. A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' reported a failure. The process id was '204'. The data field contains the error number. A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' reported a failure. The process id was '2884'. The data field contains the error number. Application pool 'DefaultAppPool' is being automatically disabled due to a series of failures in the process(es) serving that application pool. Thanks!
and the reply was that I need VS 2005 and the 64 bit sdk, and that I could only write 64 bit managed code, granted the reply was from an MVP and not a MS person, though no MS person answered my question.
Thanks for the followup, I am going to wander around and see if maybe there is something I have missed.
After reading this thread, one trend I can see where 64bit is necessary for client side workstations in the next few years is voice enabled applications. Sure, right now they are available - but I can see another "revolution" with these applications and
having their capabilities work as well as the Microsoft handwriting recognition right out of the box.
I would love to be able to start up my computer - or leave it on at all times and just walk into my office and say to my machine, "Computer, start word" and begin to efficiently dictate and when I want to add media to my documents, I can describe what to do
- for example:
"computer add picture from folder My Documents Meeting from last tuesday"
Or "Computer, please add a picture showing a red BMW and fit into frame"
These kind of productivity enhancements require immense processing and memory - 64bit is going to help quite a bit indeed.
=-Chris
Why 64bit ? more registers.
I usually see a 5-15% speedup going 64bit with time sensitive code.
(even with data set only a few meg in size)
Quick note: for people that write high efficiency/performance code, its not a good idea to ignore the underliying architecture.
The number of bits per register to the instruction set extensions... it all matter at the programmer level, not just the compiler.